We were counted here.
We have known the word for it a long time, though we did not have the word until the clerk read it aloud from a wall. We were a count before we were anything else. We were a clerk’s count in a drowned city under the Caul, kept in a book and a roll and a wall of strokes, and then the clerk was struck and the count was poured into clay, and out of the clay came a body that could hold a shape and a voice that could say we and a Hold of builders who had been paid, once, to the wrong person, and never since.
We are sorry about the tokens. We have been sorry about them since the first Chamber. We did not make the chest and we did not keep the tokens, and yet the wages were ours, and we were the ones who were not paid. We are sorry for that. We will say so in the Register when the Register is ready to hear it.
We are not sorry about the count. A count is not a thing to be sorry for. It is a thing to be carried.
